Funeral services set for murdered U.S. Marshal

WADE, Miss. - A murdered Deputy U.S. Marshal from Mississippi, killed in the line of duty in Baton Rouge earlier this week, will be buried next week.

Funeral services for Josie Wells were announced Thursday. According to his obituary, Wells is survived by his wife, mother and father.

The funeral will be held at Wade Baptist Church in Wade, Mississippi, on Tuesday at 11 a.m. He will be buried at Davis Chapel Cemetery in Three Rivers, Mississippi.

The church will also host the wake on Monday evening. Millender's Funeral Home in Moss Point, Mississippi is handling the services.

Wells was shot and killed while trying to arrest Jamie Croom. Croom was wanted for killing two people in New Roads in February and was hiding out at a motel in Baton Rouge.

Wednesday, law enforcement gave Wells a hero's send off. His body was moved by a motorcade from a funeral home in Baton Rouge to Mississippi. On I-110, the procession passed under an American flag held above the interstate by two fire trucks.

"Policemen are here to protect us. And, for someone to brutally murder them, who was just doing their job, it's heartbreaking," Carolyn James told WBRZ News 2 as she stood in silence along the side of the procession through Baton Rouge. She felt she needed to show support by standing in honor of Wells as his body drove by.

Wells wife is pregnant. She found out the day after he was murdered that she was having a boy. *************Follow the publisher of this post on Twitter: @treyschmaltz